Arcade Building on King Street (formerly listed as Grimes Arcade Building)

Arcade Building on King Street

An office building incorporating a bank and shopping arcade, completed in 1871 by architect Richardson Thomas Johnson for Richard Leigh, with some later alterations.

The building is constructed of buff sandstone with Shap granite columns, red brick, and slate roofs. It follows a U-shaped plan, formed by a double-pile front range parallel to the street that bridges the entry to the arcade, with single-pile rear wings linked by the arcade roof.

The front range faces south-west and rises three storeys plus a basement, spanning four bays wide at the upper floors with an additional fifth bay at ground-floor level. The façade is asymmetrical and executed in free Venetian Gothic style. It features prominent bracketed cornices with unusual nail-head enrichment over the ground floor and second floor, and a second-floor sill band.

The ground floor is arcaded with five unequal bays. At the left is a single-storey doorway with a flying freehold above it and a less prominent cornice. The central arcade passage opening is the widest, with shop windows either side (the right window being larger) and a second doorway at the right. All these openings have shouldered, flat-arched openings springing from engaged polished-granite columns with composite capitals, each different. The spandrels above each column display paterae with floral designs (all different) in deep relief, with elaborate cornice brackets beneath. Cartouches in the tympanum above each doorway bear the monograms of the Manchester and County Bank (left) and Richard Leigh (right). Each entrance has panelled timber double doors; the bank doorway is distinguished by smaller, raised columns.

The bays above match the ground-floor widths. The first and third bays have projecting windows. All bays contain one-light windows except for bay two, which is two-light. The windows have architraves with engaged columns; at first-floor level they are topped with decorated lintel labels and the window lights feature trefoil heads with paterae in the spandrels. All windows are timber, single-paned horned sashes.

The rear façade to Arcade Street is of red brick laid in English Garden Wall bond, with the angles between the passage and the rear wall quoined in cream brick. At ground-floor level, splayed entrances flank the arcade passage, with a shopfront at the right, stepped to accommodate the rise of the land. The upper floors are largely blind except for a window to the right of each floor, matching the second-floor rear window of the front range. The eaves carry paired stone gutter brackets. Each rear wing has an eaves stack of red brick quoined with cream brick. The passage (positioned left of centre) is roofed with a pitched glazed roof supported on arched decorated cast-iron trusses.

The rear of the front range is set well back into the passage and painted. It has one window to each floor with plain stone sills and stop-chamfered stone lintels. At second-floor level is a two-over-two sash; at first-floor level is a PVC casement. The passage through the front range features a segmental-arched brick vault.

The facing walls of the rear wings match the rear wall of the front range, each containing four windows per floor. At ground-floor level, projecting shopfronts occupy all units except the former bank. The passage walls through the front range are enriched with Gothic embellishment including pilasters with fish-scale bases. Near the Arcade Street end, prominent doorways face each other, accessing the stairs to the offices above. These doorways are framed by moulded, two-centred arches with Gothic detailing matching the bank doorway, and both retain four-panelled timber doors.

Interior

The interiors retain significant amounts of historic decorative joinery and plasterwork throughout, though some alterations have been made and suspended ceilings obscure original features in places. The decoration is particularly elaborate in the former banking hall and office, and in the front-range offices, where door and window architraves feature engaged columns reflecting the external architecture, and panelled doors echo the external doors. The first-floor front suite also contains arches in the corridor springing from stone corbels carved with Richard Leigh's monogram.

Simpler spaces also survive, notably in the rear offices and the entrance lobby to the bank from the yard to the north-west of the building, preserving much of the original hierarchy of spaces and standards of finish. The stairs retain most of their original cast-iron splat balusters and square timber newels, and a wall safe survives in the northern stairwell. Built-in brick-vaulted strongrooms occupy the northern end of each floor of the front range. The brick-vaulted basement retains some original elliptical lightwells which span the lines of the shopfronts, providing light to both the central aisle of the basement and the shop basements beneath.